Alarm: Home Secretary Theresa May told the Commons that blue chip companies may have been involved in hacking

Theresa May last night expressed alarm at revelations that lawyers and blue-chip firms are implicated in phone hacking – as ‘Britain’s FBI’ faced demands to hand a secret list of suspected culprits to MPs.

The Home Secretary told the Commons that evidence that leading companies routinely paid private investigators to dig for information on rivals and members of the public was ‘worrying’.

Her remarks came as Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, demanded that Serious Organised Crime Agency head Sir Ian Andrew provide a list of firms identified in a confidential report it produced.

Mr Vaz said: ‘If the allegations about the scale of hacking among private companies are true, this is a very serious matter.

'I intend to write to all the companies suspected of this practice to establish just how widespread it is.’

Conservative MP Rob Wilson said the Leveson Report into media standards had examined only a ‘very narrow part’ of the likely illegality taking place in the trade for personal and company data.

‘Bizarrely, Lord Justice Leveson also sought to suggest that it would be too time-consuming to consider the wider hacking claims, despite his inquiry taking 15 months to report,’ Mr Wilson said.

‘There is now little doubt that a range of large organisations have been using their considerable resources to obtain information in illicit ways.

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‘For years, I am reliably informed, these companies could get access to mobile phone data, location services, even very private personal information.

‘It is on a much wider scale and probably more institutionalised than phone hacking and every bit as scandalous.

Investigation: Although Lord Leveson published a report into press standards he is reluctant to investigate any wider hacking claims

‘There can be no serious justification for targeting the Press and media organisations when the vast majority of industrial-scale hacking is being done by others, and that the police have so far failed to investigate it.’

The MP wrote to Lord Justice Leveson last night, asking him to confirm how much evidence of wider hacking his inquiry was presented with.

It emerged at the weekend that no prosecutions had been brought against investigators hired by commercial operations to intercept phone calls, hack into computers or obtain itemised phone bills.

A secret report identifying some of those who procured information – who are thought to insist any offences were carried out without their knowledge – was apparently presented to the Leveson Inquiry.

One hacker has suggested 80 per cent of his client list comprised blue-chip companies.

John Whittingdale, the chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, asked Mrs May about allegations that police ‘uncovered widespread use of private investigators to hack telephones, not just by journalists, but also lawyers’ firms and other corporations’.

Mrs May said decisions over prosecutions were a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

But she added that she recognised the ‘degree of concern’ prompted by the new disclosures.

‘The question of phone-hacking has been a matter that has caused disquiet in this House for some time,’ she told MPs.‘The suggestion it could have been more widespread is of course equally worrying.’

Former Labour chief whip Nick Brown asked her to confirm the existence of the SOCA report and to obtain it for MPs. Mrs May said she would take his request ‘seriously’.